One can't help but wonder about smoking "related" deaths. It is a bit like so many doctors bury their mistakes, which quite often become smoking related casualties.

Fester do you have any statistics on how many people are attacked by nicotine crazed idiots, as distinct from those attacked by drunken thugs? Let me know won't you.

Bottom line is that we all have to go at some time. If smokers beat the average by a bit, who really cares? Would any of that 15000 failed to shuffle off the perch if they had never smoked?

Hasbeen,what I can speculate on is that were people smoking e-cigarettes instead, your assertion would very likely be true. Yet governments ban them because they are so dangerous. In a recent study claiming harm from e-cigarettes, the researchers showed that e-cigarettes caused airway constriction. Hardly a surprise as nicotine acts on nicotinic receptors and causes muscle constriction. Also, the response tends to reduce through prolonged exposure to nicotine, and surprise, surprise, the study only looked at the immediate effect on non-smokers. My own view is that government is more interested in the profits of the tobacco and pharmaceutical industries than the health of smokers.

While I don't think any section of the population should be ostracised I also am selfish enough to want a smoke-free environment at least for most the time. The end of smoking in restaurants, buses, planes etc could not come soon enough. It has nothing to do with wowserism because if smoking wasn't harmful to others or the smoke did not aggravate no-one would care about smoke filled rooms (other than perhaps the smell which stays with you until the next wash).

However we all live in the real world, smoker designated areas on campus or elsewhere would seem to be the obvious solution, as long as it isn't a Claytons exercise with smoke drifting from the smoking area into the non-smoking. Remember the ridiculous divides in some clubs many years ago.

I for one would like to see smoking stopped altogether but it is not going to happen any sooner than winning the lottery, so it comes down to making adeqaute provision for smokers with the least inconvenience or imposition on others as possible.

(Reminds me of the IT Crowd episode where the smokers were outside in a Soviet inspired Concentration Camp-it was a funny take on the problem)

See I have never smoked cigarettes, but they really don't bother me. I actually side with the smokers. It must be a libertarian thing for me. I actually miss the smell of smoke in my clothes in the morning reminding me of a great night out.

I know it's harmful, but what isn't these days. Are they going to ban peanuts and peanut butter? That will potentially kill children quicker than smoking around them.

Smoke away. That'll help keep my taxes down.